Expedia Drops in Google Page Rankings

A Bloomberg Businessweek article reported that Expedia has experienced a 25% drop in its website’s page rankings for travel-related searches on Google, according to Searchmetrics, a search-engine research firm. The decrease is presumed to be a result of Expedia’s “unnatural links” to Expedia.com that are posted on travel blogs and other websites.

Over the past few years, Google has launched efforts — such as Panda and Penguin — to both target and decrease the rankings of websites that artificially boosted page rankings.

As a result of its low search rankings, Expedia will most likely see at least a 20% decline in website traffic, Marcus Tober, Searchmetrics’s founder and president, told Businessweek. Additionally, Expedia’s stock price dropped 4% on Jan. 21.